by Susan Dunlap
“I’ll try, Rosa.” So far, I’d succeeded at that.
I lifted a cardboard box onto the empty table and began stacking picture frames in it—wooden, brass, and a couple that looked suspiciously like aluminum. When Madge stepped down the ladder the box was nearly full. I gathered up four more small frames, put them in, and whispered to her, “I talked to Skip Bollo just now.”
She hesitated.
“The two-year option?”
She didn’t reply. She grabbed the box and carried it up.
“You’re doing good,” Rosa called down to me. “Just keep her moving. I don’t know what Madge would do without her friends.”
I had another box filled when Madge descended. Without pause she carried it back up.
It was three boxes later that I said, “This is a valuable piece of land. Are you offering it for a commercial complex, with the two-year option?”
She put down the box. “Look, Vejay. I don’t like these questions. They’re insulting and they’re dumb. I’m not offering anything. For one reason, because I love this town and I don’t want to see it change. And for another because nobody’s buying anything. As long as the sewer is held up, and that could be forever the way things are going, no new businesses or apartments can open, so there’s no reason for anyone to buy. Do I have to make that any clearer?”
She hoisted the box and moved quickly up the stairs. Watching her, I realized what a strong woman she was. She must have been packing and climbing for a couple of hours before I arrived, but she showed remarkably little wear. Her broad shoulders and square frame filled the plaid shirt. Madge was one of those self-reliant, pioneer-stock women who came by her muscles through necessity. I suspected she had never bothered with anything so effete as “exercise,” but she did chop her own wood, carry her own boxes, and thought nothing of walking all the way into Guerneville. She was, I realized, a woman who could handle a small boat at flood time.
“Madge,” I said, handing her a box of light fixtures, “you …”
But she didn’t stop, didn’t meet my gaze. She took the box and climbed back up. At the attic hole, she said, “Come on, Rosa. It’s nearly ten o’clock. Your family will be ready for bed.”
“But Madge, we haven’t half finished.”
“It’ll still be here tomorrow.”
“So will the flood waters.”
“Not tomorrow. You don’t hear any frogs, do you?”
Rosa laughed, and in a minute she was climbing down the steps after Madge.
“Frogs?” I asked.
“One of the old-timers’ secrets. We know it will flood when the frogs cross North Bank Road and you can hear them croaking at night. You hear any frogs, Vejay?”
“No.”
“Not yet, you mean. When you hear them, then it will flood.”
With a sigh Rosa sat down on the empty table. In contrast to Madge, she looked drained. “The least you can do is give me a glass of wine before I leave, Madge,” she said. “I’ll call Carlo to come for me.”
“No, you won’t,” Madge said. “Vejay can drive you. She was just leaving anyway.”
I hadn’t been planning to leave at all. I’d intended to stay long enough to find out the truth behind Madge’s evasions, a plan that was obviously as clear to her as to me. But I had no more desire to discuss Madge’s selling out in front of Rosa than she did. I said, “Of course. I wouldn’t be presuming, would I, to think you might have discussed Frank?”
Rosa raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You must think we gossip all the time, Vejay.”
“No. I’d find it odd if you hadn’t given him some thought. Everyone else has. The sheriff talked to me twice already.”
“Twice? You mean after I spoke to him?”
“Once before, once after. I’m afraid your support wasn’t enough to make him discount me entirely. Though in fairness I did go in to see him.” I recounted my suspension from work and my scene with Wescott. Madge watched me appraisingly; Rosa nodded in agreement with my statements and scowled as I repeated the sheriff’s. “So all in all, I’m left with wondering about drugs. What do you think?”
“Frank never said anything about marijuana.”
“Rosa, if he were selling drugs, he wouldn’t start by telling everyone. It’s not a legal activity,” Madge said.
“He was at our house for dinner, for lunch. Two, three weeks he stayed with us. There was nothing odd, nothing illegal about anything he did.”
I wondered what Frank would have to have done to undermine Rosa’s determined faith in him. She was a good friend to have.
“How much did you see Frank, Madge?” I asked.
“Not often. At the bar, at Rosa’s, but not much to talk to. I was a little old and tough for Frank’s taste.” She handed Rosa and me filled wine glasses, but did not put the bottle on the table for refills. “Frank came in here maybe three or four times altogether. There was no reason for him to be here more.”
“He stopped in with us before he bought the Place, when he was still staying at our house,” Rosa said.
“I remember that. He was one of the few people who wasn’t outraged at my prices.”
We laughed.
“This is hardly Frank’s kind of stuff,” Madge said. “But he did know something about jade and ivory. He said he’d recently sold his favorite netsuke—this was almost two years ago. I remember he described it as a carving of three old women standing back to back. One had gold teeth. When you think that netsukes are only about the size of an egg, you can imagine the craftsmanship those teeth required.” Madge drained her wine glass. “Frank told me he sold it for five hundred dollars and thought he was getting a good price. When he delivered it, the buyer told him it was worth five thousand! So Frank understood the money there was to be made in art and antiques. It made me kind of uneasy when he started asking me about running the shop.”
“Was Frank thinking of opening an antique shop?” Rosa asked.
“I never could decide, Rosa. When he first came in here, right after he moved to Henderson, he asked me a lot of questions about the business, where I got my Depression glass, and my antique frames—some of those really are antique—and the bronze work, and he asked about a couple of buddhas I had then and one painting. I thought he might buy the painting, which would have been a joke, but I was wrong. Afterwards, when I considered it, I felt sure he never intended to buy anything. He was really only interested in how to run the shop. I thought he might be planning to open an antique shop of his own.”
“You think so?” Rosa asked.
“Nothing happened for a year and a half, so I forgot it. Then last month Frank came in. He asked me about vacant stores. I can tell you, that put me on edge. Henderson can’t support two antique shops. There are enough already along the river close to Guerneville.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “He knew the town as well as I did. But I did remind him about the ordinance banning new business licenses until the sewer is installed. So if Frank was thinking of opening a store, it must have been long-range planning.”
The building shook. The glass rattled.
“That wind is a bad sign,” Rosa said. “The last time there was a big flood two buildings near the river collapsed. Ed Dewey, the man who had the boat rental then, was almost killed.”
I planted my feet more squarely on the floor, as if that would protect me if the shop fell apart.
“Rosa, I don’t want to hurry you out,” Madge said, “but I’m doing it. The weather’s getting worse. You’ve had a long day, and more to come.” When Rosa opened her mouth to protest, Madge added, “And you don’t want to make Vejay stay out in this weather any later.”
Rosa stood up. “My coat.” She swallowed the last of her wine.
Madge handed her a heavy fisherman’s jacket and passed me my slicker. She hugged Rosa goodbye and avoided my gaze as she herded us out the door.
The truck was cold and the windows fogged a
lmost as soon as we got in. I let the engine warm, then turned on the defroster.
“This is a nice truck, Vejay,” Rosa said. The cold damp didn’t seem to affect her. Growing up here, she would be used to it. I wondered if I would ever reach that state. “We used to have a defroster on Carlo’s truck, but that went out five or six years ago and Carlo never got around to having it fixed. Of course, he was still fishing then. It was before the accident.”
I shifted the truck into reverse and pulled out. The windshield wipers were on high, but there were still moments when I couldn’t see through the rain.
“It was a storm like this, only it was April—salmon season,” Rosa said. “Freak storm. Carlo was out fishing. In the ocean. The mast tore loose. It hit him, his hip. Broken.”
The street was deserted, but the wind had snapped branches and thrown them onto the roadway. Leaving the truck in second gear, I drove, cautiously, in the middle of the road.
“The year after that he tried to fish, but with the rolling of the boats, he couldn’t keep his balance. It was bad, very bad for him.”
I turned right, up the sloping road to the house.
“I don’t know why I’m carrying on like this, Vejay. You’ll have to forgive me. I don’t mean to cry on your shoulder. And there’s really nothing to cry about. In the end it’s just as well Carlo stopped fishing. There are so few fish anymore that it’s all Chris can do to make a living. Carlo’s better off doing repairs. With all the new people and the bare hillsides around their new houses causing slides, he’s got more work than he can handle. The river isn’t like it was before either. There’s rubbish, chemicals, who-knows-what’s in it now. Not fish anymore. The town’s changing too. Plenty of people resent it. But for Carlo it means work.” She looked over at me as I stopped the truck and smiled. “Of course, there are people I’d rather not admit that to.”
“Like Ned Jacobs?”
She laughed. “You’ll come in, Vejay?”
“Thanks, but no, Rosa. You had me over for dinner last night and lunch today. I think it’s about time I visited my own house.”
I watched her walk up the dark path to the door. There was a light on inside. She waved, turned, and the door opened. The light and warmth seemed to wrap around her and pull her into the safety of the house.
In the pickup I shivered. I was still in my PG&E uniform, still wearing the slicker. I drove slowly through town. The street was empty and the shops closed.
I pondered over what I learned today. It seemed like years since I’d left the substation, like another lifetime. I recalled what Paul had said, and Patsy, Skip, and Madge. And Sheriff Wescott. And still, I came to the same conclusion. Frank was dealing drugs. That was why he was meeting Patsy in the state park. Either she was part of the delivery system, or merely a user. Either way, it explained why she was so upset about Frank’s murder.
I put the truck in the garage, pushed the garage door shut behind me, and trudged up the fifty-two slippery steps to the house.
Once inside, I turned on the tub full blast, boiled a pot of water for the hot water bottle that would go between the sheets, and grabbed a book to read while I soaked.
The rain slashed against the windows. I thought I heard one of those trees I should have pruned scraping louder than usual against the side of the house. I started to undress, then remembered there were no logs drying inside for the morning’s fire. I pulled my slicker back on and stepped out on the porch.
The rain hit my face; the branches crackled in the wind, but this was not loud enough to mask the sounds of a car or truck burning rubber on the street and a garage door slapping open in the rain.
I grabbed the flashlight that was lying next to my work gear inside the door and hurried, slipping, down the steps.
The garage door was flapping up and down. I pushed it up hard to the roof.
The truck was still there. I shone the light in the bed. Empty. But the hood had been pulled up. I pointed the light under it and stared.
The engine was a mess. It looked like someone had taken an axe to it.
CHAPTER 10
I CALLED THE SHERIFF’S Department, but at eleven at night, Wescott wasn’t there, and I wasn’t about to explain to someone new about Frank’s death and how my engine was connected to it.
Logically, there was no reason to be afraid. The truck was a warning. Whoever did it wasn’t going to come back now. That’s why there are warnings.
But no amount of reason helped. What I wanted was to go to a motel, some place safe, and sign in under a false name. But, of course, I couldn’t drive anywhere. I couldn’t call one of my friends to come and get me, because one of my friends might not be a friend at all. I couldn’t even bring myself to strip off my clothes and take the bath I’d yearned for all day.
Instead, I turned on every light in the house, hauled in the logs, spent an hour getting them to catch fire, and then sat there, still dressed, huddled in my quilt on the sofa all night.
Sometime during the night I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until the phone rang at eight-thirty.
“Hello?” I said, still half asleep.
“Vejay Haskell?”
“Yes.”
“Sheriff Wescott here.”
It took me a moment to place him and longer to realize why he was calling me. “My truck,” I said, “it was attacked.”
“Your truck was attacked?”
I described the condition of the engine. “The truck was in the garage. The garage door’s been jimmied.”
“There’ve been a lot of burglaries in your area lately. Ever since those Chinese brass plates were taken, it seems like the publicity encouraged all the regular housebreakers to think the whole Russian River area is an open field. And during any disaster, burglars assume the sheriff is tied up with mudslides and flood work and doesn’t have time to check on houses.”
“This was not a burglary. Nothing was stolen. And it’s not vandalism either. No one breaks into a garage to damage an engine when there are trucks parked on the street.”
“Are you sure the door was locked?”
“Yes. But that’s beside the point. Look, I was talking to people all evening, asking about Frank. It’d be too much of a coincidence if the truck attack were not connected to that.”
He said nothing.
I waited.
“Okay, don’t touch the truck. I’ll be out.”
Before I could ask when, he hung up.
When turned out to be just long enough for me to take a shower, wash my hair, and make coffee. I had finished half the cup when the doorbell sounded.
Standing on my porch, the detective looked smaller than I remembered him, and somehow less threatening in the muted light of morning.
“It’s not so bad,” he said, stepping inside.
“What isn’t?”
“I looked at your engine. Most of the damage is superficial. You won’t be able to drive the truck now, but the engine itself looks unharmed. It’s all mostly for show.”
“Oh. Well, I guess that’s a relief. I can call the auto club and have it towed into Guerneville, if the auto club is dealing with small stuff like this today.”
“I’ll have the department truck stop by. It’s here in Henderson now. We’ve had some problem with a squad car.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised.
“We are the servants of the citizens.” He smiled; it was a smile born of confidence, the type of smile I like to see when discussing my truck.
“I just made some coffee. Do you want some?”
“Sure. I’m a sucker for decent coffee.”
“Cream?”
“Real cream?”
“Well, no. Half-and-half. For here, that’s cream.”
“Okay, cream. No sugar.”
When I returned with his mug, he was perched on the ottoman of my reading chair, the closest spot to the fire.
“Are you a heat lover?”
“I like novelty.”
“You’ll
have to climb onto the logs if you want to get really warm.”
“Don’t you have heat?”
“I do, yes. It’s just that …” I paused. He was waiting with an amused expectant expression. It was, I recalled, remarkably similar to Frank’s. It was the look that had taken me in yesterday. “Meter readers have a few peculiarities. There’s a lot of competitiveness among us, friendly rivalry.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, how fast you can walk a route and still do it right. Doing it right is no issue. You make more than three mistakes per thousand, and you have explaining to do. But there are secret speed records for each route. And there’s also low-key, ongoing bragging about how little electricity you can use. Since my house is all electric, I have to be very frugal with the heat if I want to have anything at all to say.”
He laughed. Frank would have laughed. Frank would have felt that bit of foolishness deserved a drink on the house. Frank, now that I thought of that, was very generous when he chose to be. He had been more of a host than a bartender.
“I sit in my truck a lot in the winter.”
He laughed again, but this time the laugh seemed less spontaneous. He pulled out a form from his briefcase. “We’ll need a report. Tell me where you were with the truck last night.”
I recounted the evening’s visits with approximate times for each. “It was ten-thirty or quarter to eleven when I got home. It couldn’t have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes before I heard the garage door banging.”
“Did you notice another vehicle following you when you drove home?”
“No. But anyone who saw my truck in town could have guessed where I was headed.”
“Did you see anything suspicious when you got to the garage? Were there any strange vehicles parked nearby?”
“I don’t remember anything unusual. But it was late, and I was tired, and wet, and cold. All I wanted to do was get inside the house and take a bath. So I could have missed something.”
Wescott put his pen down. “You said you spent last night talking to people about Frank Goulet. Just what was it you were asking them?” His face had hardened into that weathered look. Again I had the feeling he had replaced one facade with another, and there was no clue as to what existed beneath either.
